According to John

ROCK 'N' ROLL

The Beatles are a cheeky crew. They constantly muse over the inevitability of what they call "The Downfall"--the end of the public's affair with them. And they always have a chuckle or two over the way all the pussycats lionize them. Beatle John Lennon, in fact, once said: "We sort of half hope for The Downfall--a nice downfall."

John has also said a lot of other things. A few months ago, he told a London reporter: "Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that: I'm right, and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus Christ now; I don't know which will go first--rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

Somehow, readers of the British story and of the few U.S. papers carrying it ignored Lennon's foray into theology; but last week, after the quote was reprinted in the U.S. teen magazine Datebook, all hellfire broke loose. Manager Tommy Charles of WAQY in Birmingham, Ala., forthwith banned the playing of any Beatle record on his radio station. KTEE, in Idaho Falls, Idaho, announced a similar policy "until Lennon retracts." KZEE, in Weatherford, Texas, damned their songs "eternally." By week's end, dozens of U.S. stations and others as far away as Spain and South Africa had joined the boycott. Some even proposed bonfires where listeners might incinerate Beatle disks, books and memorabilia.

Back in London, Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, discoverer, and cagey promoter par excellence, struggled out of a sickbed and enplaned for Manhattan "to assess the situation." The Beatles, after all, were due to begin a 14-city U.S. tour in Chicago this weekend. Epstein has had to deal with the Beatles' foxy chitchat before. "Show business," they once said, "belongs to the Jews; it's part of the Jewish religion." In New York, Epstein coolly declared that Lennon himself was getting a little religion. "John," he announced at a press conference, "is deeply concerned, and regrets that people with certain religious beliefs should have been offended in any way."

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